October 23, 2010

Pat Toomey On Torture

During a Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon where he was guest speaker, Toomey was asked about the torture techniques used by the Bush administration. According to Bill Peschel of the Patriot-News:

Toomey twice refused to reveal his position on the interrogation method used on suspected terrorists which simulates drowning.

"My understanding is that [waterboarding] revealed some very, very important information that saved a lot of American lives," Toomey said Monday during a Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon, where he was the guest speaker.

Toomey said prosecuting Americans who used waterboarding on terror suspects would be a "witch hunt." He said it would undermine U.S. security and have "a profoundly chilling effect on our ability to get the best possible advice from people serving in our government in the future."

But asked again if he believed waterboarding was torture, Toomey said he hasn't had a chance "to come to a conclusion other than what I have said."

That last sentence, surely, is bullshit. The United States is a signatory of the United Nations Convention Against Torture (signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the Senate in 1994) and Article I defines torture as:

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Anyone want to even try to say that waterboarding doesn't inflict "severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental"? We already know that it was used to obtain information.

And then Article II, Section 2 states:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

So even if the waterboarding "revealed some very, very important information that saved a lot of American lives" (and that's debatable), that would still not make it legal.

So why wouldn't Toomey join the rest of the civilized world and denounce what is obviously a war crime?

Pat Toomey - he just can't bring himself to say that torture is illegal.